Future Of Agriculture

Rancho Gordo: https://www.ranchogordo.com/Today’s episode is a real treat for me. Some of you know that I grew up on a small farm in Northern California that sold livestock, poultry and pumpkins directly to consumers. Then most of my career has been spent in large scale commodity agriculture. Which is why I’ve always been interested in how e-commerce can be used to scale direct to consumer business models. Admittedly there aren’t a ton of great examples of this. But we definitely have one for you today in Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. Twenty five years ago Steve started growing heirloom beans and selling them at a local farmers market. That led to conversations and the realization that he could build a business by as he says “imposing his taste” for heirloom beans on other people. That has grown by leaps and bounds and I think you’re going to be blown away by the success of his company, Rancho Gordo. This episode also offers a ton of lessons about finding and creating true fans, beanfreaks as Steve calls them,

Subscribe to Upstream Ag Insights: https://upstream.ag/"33 Mental Models For The Modern Agribusiness Leader" Upstream Ag Insights YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@upstreamaginsights2821This is probably long overdue to host Shane Thomas on the show. Shane, as many of you already know, writes the very popular newsletter Upstream Ag Insights. He has been providing extremely detailed analysis to subscribers for several years now, and I have been lucky to know Shane since I believe before he started the newsletter. We met at a seed conference in Chicago I think back in maybe 2019. For the past couple of years Shane has been able to go full time on writing his newsletter, and I highly suggest you subscribe if you haven’t already and take it a step further to become a paid subscriber to support the incredible work Shane does every single week. In addition to Upstream, Shane has a background in agronomy, ag retail, sales, marketing, strategy and precision agriculture. This allows him to bring together all the latest

Follow Josh on X: https://x.com/JLinvilleFertStoneX website: https://www.stonex.comYouTube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLseYUvaoguNifbmL84zX3plTPt4HGt-MFJosh Linville is the vice president of fertilizer at StoneX Group Inc. Growing up in northwestern Missouri on a family farm growing tobacco crops and cattle, Josh brings a unique perspective to the fertilizer markets. With over 20 years of experience in this industry, Josh has operated in roles that have given him market perspective as a North American Logistics Specialist, US-based Nitrogen Producer, and General Manager of Commerce in Melbourne, Australia. Josh and his team, which spans the globe, have worked hard to educate the market on how to use the fertilizer futures markets to not only offset price risk, but also to be able to sell produce to farmers much sooner. for fertilizer producers to start their physical sales programs.

Stock Cropper website: https://thestockcropper.com/The StockCropper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheStockCropperFollow Zack on X: https://x.com/zebulousprimeConnect with Zack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-smith-5681911b7Today’s episode features a repeat guest: Zack Smith of Stock Cropper. Zack is an ideal guest because he’s both an independent thinker and a doer. Someone who is putting his own skin in the game to make his vision for the future of agriculture a reality. Today we talk about his company’s recent pivot to focus on what they call the drive. No, not a computer drive, and self contained motor that can be mounted on any moveable poultry or livestock pen to make it autonomous, solar powered, and still secure from predators or the potential for escapees. Think of it like a trolling motor for rotational grazing. I loved the idea of stockcropping and the first product which was called the clustercluck. And I have to say I’m even more bullish now with how he has adapted his te

Follow Quentin Connealy on XConnect with Q on LinkedIn"Between 2 Farms" PodcastI’ve known Quentin Connealy just from following him online for several years now. Not only is he an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking farmer, but he’s also one of the nicest people in ag that you’ll find online. I’ve been meaning to get him on the podcast for a while, and I’m making more of an effort this year to talk to farmers like him about farm-level innovation this year, so it was the perfect time. We’ll get right into it here, but first just some helpful background on Q: Quentin Connealy is a fifth-generation farmer from eastern Nebraska, where he raises irrigated corn and soybeans along the Missouri River with his family at QJ Connealy Family Farms. Deeply rooted in production agriculture, Quentin focuses on bridging the gap between traditional farming and emerging technology—bringing real-world perspective to how innovation is adopted on working farms.With a background in interactive media and business, Quentin has become a

Jonathan Coppess Research Page: https://ace.illinois.edu/directory/jwcoppes"The Fault Lines of Farm Policy" book"Between Soil and Society" bookToday’s episode explores an important area of agriculture that I probably don’t talk enough about on this show: ag policy. I wanted to bring Dr. Jonathan Coppess on the program to ask fundamental questions like: Is ag policy working? Is the Farm Bill still relevant? What has changed in ag policy and what needs to change? As you’ll hear we dive into this and a whole lot more. For some quick background: Jonathan Coppess is the Gardner Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The author of two books on the legislative history and political development of farm policy (THE FAULT LINES OF FARM POLICY, and BETWEEN SOIL AND SOCIETY), he is a member of the farmdoc project and a frequent contributor to farmdoc daily. Jonathan previously served as Chief Counsel for the

Pairwise: https://www.pairwise.com/FoA 412: 'Biological' Is Not A Category (it's the future of agriculture)I’m excited to share today’s episode with you. I’ve wanted to get Tom Adams back on the show ever since I had the chance to interview him at World Agritech a couple of years ago. That interview was included on episode 412 of this podcast titled “Biological is not a Category”. The work Pairwise is doing is mind boggling to me. Using CRISPR and the latest in gene editing tools, they have built a platform to enable plant breeders to make very precise changes to the genome of a plant to give farmers and consumers more of what they want. Now this is different from genetic modification or GMOs because they are not inserting foreign genes into the plant. In fact, they are doing the exact same thing that plant breeders have done for over a century, they are just able to do it in an extremely precise way. On another podcast that I host, Agriscience Explained, Corteva’s Reza Rasoulpour explained natural breeding a

Rodale Institute: https://rodaleinstitute.org/"History of the Rodale Institute" on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nxSYYUMJ6F8Today we’re talking to Dr. Andrew Smith of the Rodale Institute. I originally wanted to bring Andrew onto the show to talk about the history of the Rodale Institute and it’s contribution to agricultural research. Rodale Institute is a nonprofit growing the organic movement through rigorous, solutions-based research, farmer training, and consumer education. But I ended up focusing more on questions related to tillage, organic claims and realities, and what they’re learning from their long term farming systems trials.

Wootzano: https://www.wootzano.com/Atif Syed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedatif/ Via Atif's LinkedIn post"I never thought I’d have to write this.Wootzano, the British robotics company I built from nothing, is at risk of being shut down not because of commercial failure, but because of a procedural trap.Yesterday, after a petition by Innovate UK Loans Limited (UKRI), the Court issued an order that instantly froze Wootzano’s bank accounts.That created an impossible situation:In Scotland, a company cannot speak in court without a solicitor.A solicitor must lodge our appeal.But with accounts frozen, we cannot pay a solicitor."And if we don’t file the appeal by 28 November, liquidation becomes final.A functioning deep-tech company can be silenced without ever being heard.This is not how innovation should die.Wootzano took an £838k Innovate UK Innovation Loan, a government lender, in 2022, a product marketed as patient, flexible capital for high-growth innovators. Flexibility is even built into the c

AquaSpy: https://aquaspy.com/ On the show today is Bruce Moeller, before buying AquaSpy in 2009 Bruce was already a serial entrepreneur, a former president of a publicly traded company, and an author of two books. He successfully grew and exited Culture Works and Drive Cam, which was an early dash cam company. He decided to apply the idea they used at Drive Cam to use technology to capture what hadn’t been easily recorded previously, to agriculture. Specifically in-situ monitoring of soil conditions around a plant’s roots. So Bruce and his team bought AquaSpy, a company out of Adelaide, Australia in 2009, so really early in this part of agtech, and they’ve been operating it ever since. Bruce is not from an ag background, but as you’ll hear he looked at this as more of a feature than a bug. To describe AquaSpy, Bruce uses the analogy of the ecosystem of the rhizosphere, this area of soil around the roots of having it’s own weather. And AquaSpy being a tool to check the weather down there, which has all sorts o

Five Questions About The Ag Robotics Revolution (FIRA 2024 Reflections)The Next Great Ag Equipment Brand will be Autonomy-First with Charlie Andersen of BurroAutonomous Sprayers with Gary Thompson of GUSSMaking Spot Spray Technology Accessible With Jaisimha Rao of Niqo RoboticsThe Path To Superhuman Farming with Curtis Garner and Brent Shedd of Verdant RoboticsCategory Design with Dan SchultzTHE BIG REGRESSION (by Jason Fried on X) I attended FIRA USA a few months ago, which is a great event focused on agricultural robots and autonomous solutions. Like I did last year, I wanted to share some reflections on the current state of the ag robotics sector. Today you'll hear from AgTonomy CEO Tim Bucher and Ecorobotix CEO Dominique Mégret on today’s episode about how autonomy in agriculture is much more than a way to reduce labor needs. It’s about re-thinking what it means to farm better. And while these solutions are finding their footing, we’re still a long way from widespread adoption. We talk about both the op

Podcast episodes featured:Where Will Demand Come From? | Damian Mason PodcastWill China’s cheaper tractors disrupt ag equipment? With Lachlan Monsbourgh | Agtech - So What?Reducing Weeds and Pests with Regenerative Mulching Systems with Erwin Westers | The Regenerative Agriculture PodcastField Intelligence: Elliott Grant on AI in Agriculture | Fresh Takes on TechAg's Efficiency Preoccupation Problem with Andrew Hoelscher of Farm Strategy | The PaceSetter PodcastRethinking Food and Ag Investments - The Quiet Trends Reshaping The Industry | The Modern AcreGenetic Progress Made Simple: Feed Intake, IVF, and AI Tools for Cattle | Farm4ProfitFor the third year in a row, I contacted the hosts of seven different ag podcasts to see if they would identify one of their episodes from this past year that they think is most indicative of where the agriculture industry is headed in the future.Once again, they all came through and I’m excited to share clips with you from these seven podcasters. Some of the themes are simila

FieldLark AI: https://fieldlark.ai/Advancing Eco Agriculture: https://advancingecoag.com/Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: https://advancingecoag.com/podcasts/FoA 386: Challenging Assumptions About Regenerative Agriculture With John KempfToday we’re joined by John Kempf, founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture. John first joined me on the podcast two years ago for episode 386 titled “Challenging Assumptions About Regenerative Agriculture”. That episode was widely shared and provided me with a ton of interesting feedback. So I was eager to bring John back on especially to discuss this new AI regenerative agronomist tool they’ve launched which is called FieldLark AI. As I hoped, John and I also get somewhat philosophical about technology use and ethics, and we talk about a separate but similar project he has taken on of building a digital clone of his knowledge and expertise. We talk about what that process looked like and how he’s using Digital Clone John in his daily life. And you agronomy nerds definitely will

Burro website: https://burro.ai/FoA 271: Ag Robotics Roundtable: https://futureofagriculture.com/episode/foa-271-ag-robotics-roundtableI’m really excited to share today’s episode with you. Charlie Andersen is one of the most impressive and intelligent founders that I’ve had the chance to speak with. I can remember being blown away with him when he was a part of our Ag Robotics Roundtable which became episode 271 of this podcast clear back in 2021. Charlie co-founded Burro in 2017 and today they have over 600 systems running in the field, which is arguably the largest fleet of mobile robots running in an outdoor agricultural setting today. If you’ve never seen a Burro before, think about like a flat bed cart, for lack of better term. They are 5hp to 20hp autonomous vehicles that go up to 6.5 mph in speed. They can tow, haul things, mow, spray, and patrol all autonomously. They even can be used with a docking station to recharge themselves to run continuously. They are very cool, and uniquely designed to a

Today’s episode is another installment in our Tech-Enabled Advisor series. The idea here is to better understand agtech through the lens of the BUYER and USER of that technology rather than just the entrepreneurs or investors behind it. I’ve received some super positive feedback about the return of this series. By talking to the buyers rather than the sellers of the tech, we got an unfiltered introduction to the technology and more importantly got to see HOW its used and the VALUE that it provides. To do this, I partner with a company and together we invite one of their customers onto the show. The catch is that they’re not allowed to script these individuals or dictate what to say or edit it after it is recorded - it has to be real and unfiltered. So today’s episode featuring Todd Kirwan of Apex Precision Agriculture is produced in partnership with AgWorld. And I’m really excited to be partnering with them again, as they were a part of the last time I did this tech-enabled advisor series. But

"The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C. MannRhishi Pethe's "Software is Feeding the World" Newsletter "In 1968, the year a USAID official coined the term 'Green Revolution', Norman Borlaug gave a victory lap speech at a wheat meeting in Australia. Twenty years before, he said, Mexican farmers had reaped about 760 pounds of wheat from every acre planted. Now that figure had risen to almost 2,500 pounds per acre, triple the harvest from the same land. The same thing was happening in India. He said the first green revolution wheat had been tested there just in 1964-1965 growing season. It had been so successful that the government had tested it on 7,000 acres the next year, and now it was covering almost 7 million acres. The same thing was happening in Pakistan, and this didn't even count the Green Revolution rice, also short and disease resistant, which was spreading across Asia." That is an excerpt from the book we'll be talking about here today. "The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C. Mann. The subtitle

Erin Silva, Ph.D. https://cias.wisc.edu/directory/17158/FoA 280: Organic Farming Myths and Realities With Erin SilvaI wanted to invite Erin Silva back on the show to hear about her continued work with farmers that are going down the path of organic AND regenerative. On the surface, those two farming approaches are easy to get behind: let’s try to reduce our dependence on synthetic chemistry and let’s try to build soil health over time while still farming intensively and profitably. But in practice, there are tradeoffs. To promote more living roots on the soil through cover crops, as one example, farmers need a way to terminate those cover crops and using herbicides for that is really really helpful. So I’m intrigued about how farmers are making these systems work and how scientists like Erin our doing the critical research to understand how these practices can work on more acres for more farmers. So that is what today’s episode is all about, and for context I’ll give you a brief bio on our guest. Dr. Erin Sil

Todd's Profile on Farm Progress: https://www.farmprogress.com/author/todd-fitchetteTodd's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddfitchette/Todd Fitchette is the editor of Western Farm Press which is part of the Farm Progress Group. Todd has been there covering relevant agricultural issues for farmers in the West since 2013. His journalism career began in 1990 with community newspapers in California, where he earned First Place honors from the National Newspaper Association for his photography.His career progressed to agriculture journalism where he reported on livestock and specialty crop issues in the West. This work includes covering subjects relevant to large herd dairy operations, specialty crops including fruits, nuts, vegetables and niche operations. He also covers public policy and water issues affecting western farmers. He has repeatedly been honored for his agricultural journalism by the Fresno County Farm Bureau in California. He currently lives in Yuma, Arizona.I’ve been reading articles from To

I’m really fascinated by today’s topic of looking into pest and disease outbreaks in animal agriculture from an economist's point of view. Our guest, Jada Thompson, is going to discuss the economics behind prevention of these biosecurity issues,the economic impact when outbreaks do occur,  some of the tradeoffs in the difficult decisions that need to be made, what that means for producers and consumers, and a whole lot more. To give you a little bit of background on Jada: Dr. Jada Thompson is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. She worked in private industry for a few years managing customer insights and pricing analytics before earning her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Colorado State University in 2016. Dr. Thompson’s research primarily focuses on animal health and livestock economics with emphasis on the poultry industry. She also came very highly recommended from Dr. Trey Malone who was on this show last ye

Lumo: https://lumo.ag/Great episode for you today with Devon Wright of Lumo. The Lumo story is really interesting for a number of reasons. One of which is that they have managed to take on venture capital, but still remain very focused on serving a very specific market within agriculture. As you’ll hear they have resisted the temptation that has led to the demise of so many agtech companies to try to be for everyone and rapidly expand to as many acres as possible. But Lumo is focused exclusively on wine grapes, and for a long time only wine grapes in the areas of Sonoma and Napa Counties in California. Also, Devon is just an interesting dude. I’ll read his bio here to give you a sense of what I’m talking about: Devon Wright is an entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder and CEO of Lumo, where he and his team are on a mission to massively improve food and freshwater security by giving farmers the best irrigation system in the world. He sold his first startup, a local marketing platform for restaura